Category Archives: US Politics

With just over three weeks to go, we’ve got ourselves a ball game. President Obama’s bizarrely listless performance in last week’s debate has served as the fillip the Romney campaign sorely needed, and has led polls to indicate a Presidential race that is now too close to call. Vice President Joe Biden came out fighting in Thursday’s debate with Republican rival Paul Ryan, but while that may rouse the troops once more it is unlikely to change the face of an increasingly close election. Read the rest of this entry →

Yesterday saw the release of a video from a behind-closed-doors Romney speech to wealthy campaign donors. In it, the Republican nominee for President of the United States explains his belief that 47% of Americans “believe that they are victims” and claims “my job is not to worry about those people”. Dismissing half the population may seem an unconventional electoral strategy, but in truth it is in keeping with what has been a disastrous period for a beleaguered campaign.

With any hopes of a post-convention bounce lost amidst the bizarre nature of Clint Eastwood’s ‘speech’ and the more impressive Democratic gathering, Romney’s campaign is beginning to resemble a squandered opportunity for Republicans. The economy continues to struggle, many Democrats are disillusioned with the last 4 years, independent voters are receptive to an alternative and President Obama no longer seems able to inspire the masses as he did in 2008. Yet, amidst the recent in-fighting, weak polling and struggle to re-launch the campaign, any message that may have resonated with vital swing voters seems to have been lost. Read the rest of this entry →

Not that I mean to boast or anything, but this particular writer is fortunate (or brilliant, whichever you prefer) enough to have been accepted onto a study abroad scheme to spend the next academic year in New York.

Inflated ego aside, this has allowed me the pleasure of spending my morning off browsing health insurance options from US providers. What is immediately striking is just how complicated it all seems, and how bizarre it is for a UK citizen so fond of the NHS to have to think about such matters.

Health insurance is currently top of my agenda, and it seems Barack Obama is intent on moving it up the agenda of the US electorate as well.

Barack Obama certainly looks to have a tough job on his hands getting re-elected. Quite apart from seeking to transform America into that living hell we all know to be European social democracy, the President has shrunk the US military and, perhaps most importantly, doubled America’s budget deficit from the $1.3 trillion figure he inherited in 2009.

At least that’s what Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney would have you believe. An underwhelming Super Tuesday all but confirmed Romney as the party’s nominee, though a pair of third place finishes behind Newt Gingrich and winner Rick Santorum in the South on Tuesday night complicate things somewhat . Yet this further elevation to his political status has seemingly done little to assuage Romney’s propensity for what can only be termed lies. Read the rest of this entry →

“We don’t begrudge success in America,” Mr. Obama said. But, he added, “We do expect everybody to do their fair share, so that everybody has opportunity, not just some.”

Hardly controversial stuff; or so you’d think. On Monday President Obama announced his budget for the 2013 fiscal year and along with it large swathes of his manifesto for re-election. In a campaign that is likely to be defined by economic issues, this budget was always destined to be political in nature. Yet, opponents have still found it within them to express commendable faux-outrage.

The words of leading anti-tax campaigner Grover Norquist were indicative of the criticisms Obama faced. He claimed “this is not an economic document, it’s not a policy document, it’s a political document”. Of course, it goes without saying that a budget is, at least in the most literal sense, an economic document. Yet the measures announced by Obama are in some parts so lacking in excitement and originality that they will do little to change the economic course already set, and in others so flagrantly partisan that they have no chance of being passed. So in truth, the budget will have a minimal economic impact at best. Read the rest of this entry →